Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 2 – 9″ layer cake tins, and line them with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix together sugar, flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl beat together vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture, and combine without over–mixing. Fold in the shredded carrots. Scrape batter into prepared pans, and bake 35–45 minutes on the middle rack of your oven until set or until a toothpick comes out clean.
3. Let cool 10 minutes before inverting onto cooling racks. Peel off the parchment paper.
4. To prepare the icing, blend together the cream cheese and butter. Slowly add the sugar, vanilla and orange juice. When cake is completely cool, ice the top of the first layer, then place the second layer over it and ice cake evenly.
5. If desired, reserve a small amount of icing, tint it with orange food colouring and pipe it decoratively to look like baby carrots around the edge of the cake. Press the blade of a knife lightly and randomly along the “carrots” for a more realistic appearance. You can also tint some of the icing green to look like carrot tops.